Private Finished Cats On The Prowl

Nat had initially been pretty dismissive of the rumour situation.

At first, they'd all seemed unimportant. Many of them were just high schoolers, and students spreading rumours about each other was hardly an unusual occurrence.

The first one that properly caught her attention was Alexander Drakenhardt and the talks of him throwing his money around. However, as an isolated incident, it sounded like the kind of thing someone would find in a tabloid rather than a story worth pursuing. Nat had standards, she wasn't going to seriously waste time on something like that.

But now things were starting to heat up, students were being seen going ballistic, shady deals were happening with important people, and the old dragon even seemed to be losing money. Something was going on, and Nat's curiosity was more than piqued.

So she'd starting paying attention to the rumour mill, keeping her ear low to the ground, and was surprised to find her roommate was now being spoken about. How convenient, she wouldn't even have to make any phone calls to start investigating that one.

She'd ordered some Chinese takeout earlier and was just finishing her meal, relaxing in her apartment as she waited for Kon to get back. She figured he'd have interesting thoughts on the matter.

@Keen

"Evening to you as well, Kon." She gave a casual smile and wave as he walked in. "I don't need cookies to give you your fortune tonight, it turns out. I'll just need you to tell me something first."

Nat gestured across the dining table for him to take a seat, before pushing her chair back and reaching over to grab her laptop. She continued to talk while booting it up.

"How much have you been paying attention to all these weird rumours lately?" She asked. It was a rhetorical question, she was well aware that Kon was keyed into them, he wouldn't have even needed to tell her that for her to assume.

"I guess you haven't heard then." She said, her expression going from its usual playful smile to something a bit more businesslike. " In that case, I'm afraid I got some bad news for you."

She spun the laptop around to show Kon the screen. She'd written down a few brief notes in a document containing some choice quotes she'd picked up regarding Kon, and his irregular behaviour that people had been talking about.

"Looks like you're the talk of the town now. You and the Welcome Society." She went on. "Apparently, you've been creeping people out, and they think it's suspicious."

Nat quirked an eyebrow at the sudden shift in appearance. The annoyance was about what she expected, but the very physical reaction wasn't something she was used to.

"Not in any official capacity, anyway. I'm your roommate, and part of the Welcome Society as well. I can't exactly publish an article about this, being so close to it."

She spun the laptop back to her, clasped her hands and rested them on the table.

"But I'm planning on looking into the other incidents either way and if this is related, I figured it'd be worth asking." She continued. "If I can prove the others were faked then you'll be in the clear as well, and since I'd rather not get dragged down along with you I'm very interested in doing that."

"So what do you think? Any clue as to who might want to slander you?"

Nat acknowledged the apology with a small tilt of her head. If the shift had really bothered her she showed no sign of it. She just paid attention to what he had to say, running through it all in the back of her mind.

"From what I can tell, yes. I'd need to go track down specific names if you want to confirm it yourself, but people definitely think 'you' have approached them."

She came to a similar conclusion in her head, it matched what she'd been hearing about the other rumours so far, though they still didn't have enough info to confirm much.

"If it's related to the rest, we can probably rule out someone wanting to slander you specifically, I know you have a wide social network but everyone targeted so far don't seem to be associated that much."

She leaned back in her seat, tapping two fingers together as she thought to herself.

"Why would someone go and impersonate all these unrelated people?"